Richard Pryor Wants to Go Fishing

a short story inspired by a true story

screenshot from ‘Bustin Loose’ (1981)

This is a fictional story that was inspired by my grandmother, who was a home nurse for Richard Pryor’s uncle during the early 80s. The only thing nonfiction in this story is that Pryor showed up unannounced one day to take his uncle fishing. Everything else is made up. I also used Richard Pryor’s autobiography to inform how his frame of mind might have been around this time, which was shortly after the fire incident that he says changed his life and not quite for the better. Other than all that, totally fiction story. Please don’t sue me, Mr. Pryor’s estate.

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Richard Pryor was cruising down the 405 in a brand-new cherry red 1981 Corvette convertible, sunshine and wind flowing through his hair, pure Peruvian cocaine flowing through his blood. He felt good and he wanted to stay feeling that way, which meant he didn’t want to do any  Hollywood bullshit today. He had a meeting scheduled with some producers, but he forgot which ones and where at, but he did remember the script was forgettable, so fuck it. 

What Richard wanted to do was be with someone whose mindset was so far removed from Hollywood, they wouldn’t even bring it up. But who? Everyone he knew, everyone he came in contact with - even the Filipino with the Peruvian - wanted to talk Hollywood bullshit. Who could he be with who wouldn’t?

Uncle Dickie, that’s who.

“Mothafucking Uncle Dickie!” Richard shouted, smiling so wide, the cigarette in his mouth fell out and onto his lap. But he grabbed it and put it back into his mouth with a reflex faster than a Fernando Valenzuela fastball. 

“Ain’t no mothafuckas getting burned today!” he said. 

Richard flicked the cigarette out and imagined him and Uncle Dickie relaxing on a little boat with a warm orange sun covering them like a loving blanket. He wanted to feel that sun so bad, he yanked his Corvette into fifth gear and sped south toward Palm Springs.

“Uncle Dickie - we going fishing!!” 

Uncle Dickie was Richard’s favorite uncle. Back when Richard was a kid growing up in Peoria, learning how to be funny, Uncle Dickie would laugh the most out of the grown men around. And since making the men laugh was always harder (especially his father) than making the women laugh, those Uncle Dickie guffaws always made Richard feel good, like he had done something. 

Uncle Dickie was also the last of Richard’s close relatives from back home. And since Dickie was in his 70s with a bloated body giving out faster than his moribund mind, Richard brought him out to sunny California a few years ago and got him a nice little place in Palm Springs with a cute little white nurse to take care of him for the rest of his days.

Richard put the top up on his convertible to avoid any cocaine from blowing away, and, letting go of the steering wheel, dumped a fat bump on his hand and snorted it. He then reached into the glove compartment, pulled out a pint of vodka, and took a swig. The alcohol burn mixed with the cocaine nose drainage in his throat, a taste he hated almost as much as he loved. 

The toxic lush washed over him and reminded him of that thought he had earlier:  sitting in a boat with Uncle Dickie under the sun like it was a blanket. That’s all he wanted to do. Sit with Uncle Dickie, talk about the old times, remembering them as better than they were, and get away from all the opinions and pressures and wives and people, faceless and anonymous but somehow with total control over his life, people who he wasn’t sure lately if they were laughing with him or laughing at him. Ever since he blew himself up, he just didn’t feel sure. And he needed to feel sure today.

One hour, three grams of cocaine, and half a pint of vodka later, Richard was at Uncle Dickie’s Palm Springs bungalow, a cozy two bedroom spot on a quiet street with big windows in the front and big mountains looming in the background. Richard always liked staring out into those mountains, wondering what kind of animals were out there and what they were doing. He would never go out there, but right now, wanting to get away from everything, he wondered if maybe he should take a walk out there, look around and see what happens. 

“Then watch my ass get eaten by a bear,” he said to himself. “And all the papers will have some shit like, ‘Black Bear Eats Richard Pryor!’ because media always trying to blame black folk.” 

His eyes on the mountains, he took one last puff of his cigarette and threw it aside.

“Hell no,” he said, and went up to the door of his uncle’s bungalow and knocked.

Richard expected that cute white nurse to answer - the one who always said how much of a fan she was and how much funnier he was than Bill Cosby, that corny motherfucker. But instead, opening the door was a tall, dark-skinned woman with a stern face, 30 or so but also maybe a lot older, wearing a crisp white nurse uniform - like a black Miss Ratchet, he thought.

“Can I help you, sir?” she said in what Richard thought sounded like a Jamaican accent.

“Hey, I’m Rich!” he said with a big smile.

The nurse had no reaction. She just looked at him like he was wasting her time.

“Can I help you, sir?” she repeated, annoyed this time. 

Richard chuckled, feeling a little embarrassed, but amused this woman seemed to not know who he was.

“You Jamaican?” he said.

The nurse jerked her head back and put her hand over her heart - a lady offended.

“No, I’m not Jamaican!” she said. “Now tell me what your business is before I shut this door and call the police.”

Richard laughed out loud, smiling even bigger than last time.

“I’m Richard Pryor! I’m Dickie’s nephew. Where’s Betty? She out sick or something?”

“Ah, so you’re the nephew,” the nurse said. “My name is Patricia and Miss Betty is on hiatus. I’m taking care of Mr. Dickie for the time being.”

“Hiatus? Bitch got fired?”

“I don’t appreciate that language, sir, and I’m not at liberty to discuss Ms. Betty’s employment status.”

Richard couldn’t get over this woman’s sing-songy Caribbean accent. 

“If you ain’t Jamaican, where the hell you from, Patricia? Cuz you sound Jamaican.”

“I’m from Nicaragua, sir.”

“That’s how they talk in Nicaragua? I thought they was Spanish like the Mexicans? I see y’all on the news - badass guerillas fighting in the jungle and shit!”

“I’m one of the other Nicaraguans,” she said. 

Richard wasn’t sure what that meant, but nodded his head like he understood and decided to leave it alone. He wanted to get going. 

“So where’s Dickey?”

Patricia led Richard to the den in the back of the house. The room had large windows facing the mountains and sunlight filled the space. Uncle Dickie, heavyset and elderly, sat motionless in a wheelchair facing the windows. He snored lightly. 

“He’s resting,” Patricia whispered to Richard. 

Richard quietly pulled up a chair next to Uncle Dickie and sat down. He looked at his uncle’s face closely and realized it had been a while since he came out to visit. Uncle Dickie had always had a chubby face, but now it looked a bit thinner from the sagging skin, which was covered in wrinkles and spots. His breathing was so laborious, it made Richard feel out of breath - or maybe that was just the Peruvian. Either way, Richard thought back to the Peoria days, when he was just a kid. He thought about Dickie back in the day, how much softer he was than his own father, who was always mad about something.

Dickie, on the other hand, was as tough as the rest of the men in Peoria, but smiled more, seemed to have more fun, always a cigar in one hand and a drink in the other. Richard looked at Dickie’s old face and saw it 30 years younger, sitting in the back of that smoke-filled nightclub he owned, laughing, a good-looking woman sitting next to him, having a good time, enjoying life. 

And now, Dickie was sitting here, not much life left in him. Richard looked at him and felt the same way about himself. Not much life left in him, either. He had been clean for a few weeks after the burning mishap. But it didn’t last. He couldn’t see the point. Cocaine felt too good - sometimes better than pussy and always with less trouble as long as he stayed away from flames and 151. He felt better. But he didn’t feel more life. He had to feel something. He had to go fishing.

Richard gently shook Uncle Dickey’s knee. 

“Uncle Dickey,” he said in a whisper. “It’s Rich. Wake your big ass up.”

Uncle Dickey’s weary eyes opened hesitantly, but brightened when they saw Richard. He smiled.

“What the hell you doing here?” he said. He spoke slowly, the words taking effort to put out.

“Ain’t you got some white bitch to be fucking?”

Uncle Dickey laughed hard at his own joke and initiated a coughing fit. He lurched forward and his midsection shook. Richard realized that the only time Uncle Dickie moved this much, this fast, was when he got into a coughing fit like this. It made him feel sad inside. Getting old was a motherfucker.

Patricia rushed over and straightened Dickie’s back against his wheelchair. 

“Breathe, Mr. Dickie,” she said, and put a paper cup of water in his hand. 

Dickie’s cough subdued and he took a sip of the water. 

“Needs something,” he said, and winked at Richard. 

Richard nodded knowingly. He agreed. The vodka buzz was wearing off and he needed that warm feeling back. On the way to the fishing spot, he’d pick up a bottle of vodka and he and Dickie would sip and reminisce. 

“Guess what we’re doing today?” Richard said. “We going fishing!”

Dickie grinned.

“What’s that I hear?” Patricia said. “Mr. Dickie is not going anywhere but right here!”

Dickie’s grin disappeared.

“She’s tough, man,” he said. “But she’s right. It’s hard enough to get my big ass on the toilet. Going fishing would be a bitch and a half, boy. Too old for the good shit these days.”

Richard felt a pain in his heart that, for a quick second, thought was a heart attack. But that was just the paranoia from the Peruvian messing with him. What he felt was a tinge of heartbreak. He sighed with relief when he realized that’s what it was, especially because he knew how to fix it: Get Dickie’s big ass into his car and drive him to the lake. 

“I don’t wanna hear none of that, Uncle Dickie - we have to go fishing!” 

Richard jumped up and got a hold of the handles on Dickie’s wheelchair.

“We have to go fishing!” he said. 

Richard turned Dickie’s wheelchair toward the front door and made his way toward it, but Patricia grabbed his arm, stopping both him and Dickie on a dime.

“You listen to me, Mr. Richard,” she said, her sing-song Caribbean accent stern and harsh. “You are not taking him nowhere. I have my orders and that’s what I’m going to do.”

“Orders from who?” Richard said. “I pay for everything in this motherfucker - you, too. If I want to take Dickie fishing, I’m gonna take his ass fishing, ya dig?”

But Patricia crossed her arms and shook her head.

“No, sir,” she said. “I need to have permission from the agency to move him and I don’t have that.”

Richard felt his stomach getting tight and his forearms starting to tremble. He needed more Peruvian, he needed more vodka, and he needed that damn sun blanket he had been thinking about since he drove out of Westwood on the 405.  But most of all, he needed to go fishing with Uncle Dickie. 

“You want money? I’ll give you money!” Richard said. He pulled his wallet and took out two crisp 100-dollar bills.

“Sir, if I was going to lose my job, it would cost more than that,” Patricia said. 

“You want to be in a movie? We need a mean Jamaican bitch in the next movie and you fit the part!”

Patricia balled up her fist and gave Richard a look that cut through his fading cocaine buzz like a chainsaw through styrofoam.

“What did you call me?” she said. 

“I didn’t say shit! In fact, I was never here,” he said. “All you gotta say if they ask, Dickie’s crazy ass went by himself. He’s a grown man. It’s his house. He can leave when he wants.”

“That’s right,” Dickie said, the words struggling to get out. 

“That’s wrong,” Patricia said, and she grabbed a hold of the handles on Dickie’s wheelchair and pushed him back to the den.

Richard’s stomach was convulsing and his entire arms - forearms and biceps - trembled hard.

“Jamaican lady who isn’t really Jamaican - please listen to me,” he said. Patricia turned around to listen. 

“You ever feel that you needed to do something so bad, if you didn’t do it, everything inside of you would eat up everything else inside of you and all you’d have left is a big ass empty hole inside of you?”

“No,” she said.

“Well, imagine that shit. Imagine everything you are, everything you feel, everything you hold onto to help you make sense of all the world’s bullshit just disintegrating into nothing, know what I mean? Just getting zapped away like it was nothing. That’s how I feel. That’s how I feel right now. Like everything is sand slipping through my fingers and I can’t stop it. I can’t stop any of it. And real fucking soon, everything will just be gone and I’ll be gone and, ma’am, listen to me: I need to take my Uncle Dickie fishing. Okay?”

Patricia saw Richard was hurting. She knew it was drugs. But she also knew it was something else that she couldn’t see. When you take care of sick people long enough, you can see the pain under their illness. And sometimes quite often, that pain is what’s really killing them. The illness is just an excuse to die. 

She turned Dickie’s wheelchair around and made towards the front door.

“I’ll push him, but you’re picking his big ass up,” she said. 

Richard laughed - a genuine gut laugh. It felt good. 

An hour later, he and Dickie were on the edge of Lake Cahuilla, sipping vodka and waiting for the fish to bite as the warm sun covered them like a blanket.